North Melbourne counting the cost of loss to Geelong with injuries to key players

AN injury-hit North Melbourne faces a race against time to have up to five players available to take on Hawthorn at Etihad Stadium on Friday night.

Andrew Swallow didn’t come back on after suffering concussion in the first quarter. Picture: Michael Klein

AN injury-hit North Melbourne faces a race against time to have up to five players available to take on Hawthorn at Etihad Stadium on Friday night after Saturday night’s 31-point loss to Geelong.

Kangaroos coach Brad Scott said injuries to Andrew Swallow (concussion), Ben Cunnington (leg), Nick Dal Santo (adductor), Shaun Atley (ankle) and Robin Nahas (compound fracture of the finger) had an impact on a challenging night for the club.

But he refused to blame the loss outright on the injuries, saying good sides had to somehow find a way when confronting serious challenges.

“I suppose it is an intangible; it clearly had an effect, but to what level it is hard to quantify,” Scott said. “I am not going to say there wasn’t duress. Clearly, there was.

“But I think one of the hallmarks of good, solid teams is that they find a way under duress, and that was certainly our attitude.”

Scott was unsure which of the injured players would be available to take on the Hawks, saying the club would monitor their progress throughout the week.

“I am not sure what the total wash-up would be,” he said. “We plugged one hole and something else happened.

Take of the injury toll. Andrew Swallow (left), Shaun Atley (middle) and Ben Cunnington (right) on the bench at the end of the game. Picture: Michael Klein

“But I thought we hung in pretty well, given the Swallow, Cunnington, Dal Santo things happened all at one in the first 15 minutes of the game. It means your midfield has been decimated to a certain degree.

“We hung in there and we found a way to score in the second quarter, but we just couldn’t sustain that against some really strong Geelong performances.”

Scott admitted he had a dilemma in knowing how to deal with Patrick Dangerfield, who produced one of the great individual performances, with 48 possessions, equalling a club record set by Peter Featherby in 1981.

“We had to take probably our best player halfway through the second quarter off the wing — in Sam Gibson — and try and invent another midfielder because clearly Dangerfield was running riot,” he said. “We just didn’t have anyone to play on him.

“We just felt ... the way the numbers were in terms of personnel, that if we really rob Peter to pay Paul just to shut him down alone, then we were really going to struggle on the other side of the contest.”